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Mildred Barnes Bliss to Elisina Grant Richards, January 1, 1911

New Year’s Day, 1911Sunday.

Dear Elisina

May all good come to you of this New Year. I have considerable contempt for the idea which prompts the celebration of anniversaries, but I note with some amusement and much humility that I hope to them with increasing affection and tenacity each year! As Robert aptly points out, it is scarcely worth while for me to distinguish “days” long since past, when I seldom manage to know what the natural day of the week is, in which I am existing! But I have a very, almost too, definite idea of the time in relation to one’s life, if not of the time of day, and that after all is the essential.

Dear Elisina, this is but a message of friendship and bright hopes as the calendar turns a corner, and to tell you we have offered to invest £1000. in Grant Richards Ltd. It was done before noon on Dec. 31st by a friendly one in London, through Wainwright Pollock & Co., and our names not appearing.See also letters of September 17, 1910, and November 1, 1910. Robert thought this a wise course to follow and I am sure you and Royall will preserve the incognito. Were the peculiarly personal source of the investment to reach Grant Richards it might cause us all regrets.

I shall be writing Royall on account of conditions in B.A.Buenos Aires. soon. Meanwhile our thanks for the Persian Pottery article,Probably Royall Tyler, “Primitive Persian Art,” Saturday Review, November 19, 1910. But the reference may be to the manuscript of an article Tyler would publish on the Persian pottery collection of Dikran G. Kelekian: “The Kelekian Collection at South Kensington,” Saturday Review, February 25, 1911. See The Kelekian Collection of Persian and Analogous Potteries 18851910 (Paris, 1910). See also the letter of August 26, 1910. which I’ve not yet had time to read. I’m glad he is contributing to the Sat. Review—the only weekly I have ever been able to read regularly!Royall Tyler expressed the same sentiment in his letter of September 1, 1905: "[The Saturday Review] is nearly the only English newspaper that I care to read. The dailies are not worth the trouble—not one of them." I think of you much and long for the day of our meeting—although I suppose in the wider sense, that is incidental. A Kiss on my godson’s fuzzy little head. My love to his parents and Robert’s warm regard.

Yours always loyally

Mildred Bliss.

 
Associated Things: Saturday Review